The Marriage of William Ashe Part 76

"All this hurt me deeply, and I could not restrain myself from crying. I felt so helpless, and so doubtful whether I had not done more harm than good. Then she softened a little, and asked me to let her go to bed--she would think it all over and write to me in the morning....

"So, my dear William, I can only pray and wait. I am afraid there is but little hope, but G.o.d is merciful and strong. He may yet save us all.

"But whatever happens, remember that you have nothing to reproach yourself with--that you have done all that man could do. I should telegraph to you in the morning to say, 'Come, at all hazards,' but that I feel sure all will be settled to-morrow one way or the other. Either Kitty will start with me--or she will go with Geoffrey Cliffe. You could do nothing--absolutely nothing. G.o.d help us! She seems to have some money, and she told me that she counted on retaining her jointure."

On the night following her interview with Lady Tranmore, Kitty went from one restless, tormented dream into another, but towards morning she fell into one of a different kind. She dreamed she was in a country of great mountains. The peaks were snow-crowned, vast glaciers filled the chasms on their flanks, forests of pines clothed the lower sides of the hills, and the fields below were full of spring flowers. She saw a little Alpine village, and a church with an old and slender campanile. A plain stone building stood by--it seemed to be an inn of the old-fashioned sort--and she entered it. The dinner-table was ready in the low-roofed _salle-a-manger_, and as she sat down to eat she saw that two other guests were at the same table. She glanced at them, and perceived that one was William and the other her child, Harry, grown older--and transfigured. Instead of the dull and clouded look which had wrung her heart in the old days, against which she had striven, patiently and impatiently, in vain, the blue eyes were alive with mind and affection.

It was as if the child beheld his mother for the first time and she him.

As he recognized her he gave a cry of joy, waving one hand towards her while with the other he touched his father on the arm. William raised his head. But when he saw his wife his face changed. He rose from his seat, and drawing the little boy into his arms he walked away. Kitty saw them disappear into a long pa.s.sage, indeterminate and dark. The child's face over his father's shoulder was turned in longing towards his mother, and as he was carried away he stretched out his little hands to her in lamentation.

Kitty woke up bathed in tears. She sprang out of bed and threw the window nearest to her open to the night. The winter night was mild, and a full moon sailed the southern sky. Not a sound on the water, not a light in the palaces; a city of ebony and silver, Venice slept in the moonlight. Kitty gathered a cloak and some shawls round her, and sank into a low chair, still crying and half conscious. At his inn, some few hundred yards away, between her and the Piazzetta, was Geoffrey Cliffe waking too?--making his last preparations? She knew that all his stores were ready, and that he proposed to ship them and the twenty young fellows, Italians and Dalmatians, who were going with him to join the insurgents, that morning, by a boat leaving for Cattaro. He himself was to follow twenty-four hours later, and it was his firm and confident expectation that Kitty would go with him--pa.s.sing as his wife. And, indeed, Kitty's own arrangements were almost complete, her money in her purse, the clothes she meant to take with her packed in one small trunk, some of the Tranmore jewels which she had been recently wearing ready to be returned on the morrow to Lady Tranmore's keeping, other jewels, which she regarded as her own, together with the remainder of her clothes, put aside, in order to be left in the custody of the landlord of the apartment till Kitty should claim them again.

One more day--which would probably see the departure of Margaret French--one more wrestle with Lady Tranmore, and all the links with the old life would be torn away. A bare, stripped soul, dependent henceforth on Geoffrey Cliffe for every crumb of happiness, treading in unknown paths, suffering unknown things, probing unknown pa.s.sions and excitements--it was so she saw herself; not without that corroding double consciousness of the modern, that it was all very interesting, and as such to be forgiven and admired.

Notwithstanding what she had said to Ashe, she did believe--with a clinging and desperate faith--that Cliffe loved her. Had she really doubted it, her conduct would have been inexplicable, even to herself, and he must have seemed a madman. What else could have induced him to burden himself with a woman on such an errand and at such a time? She had promised, indeed, to be his lieutenant and comrade--and to return to Venice if her health should be unequal to the common task. But in spite of the sternness with which he put that task first--a sternness which was one of his chief attractions for Kitty--she knew well that her coming threw a glamour round it which it had never yet possessed, that the pa.s.sion she had aroused in him, and the triumph of binding her to his fate, possessed him--for the moment at any rate--heart and soul. He had the poet's resources, too, and a mind wherewith to organize and govern. She shrank from him still, but she already envisaged the time when her being would sink into and fuse with his, and like two colliding stars they would flame together to one fiery death.

Thoughts like these ran in her mind. Yet all the time she saw the high mountains of her dream, the old inn, the receding face of her child on William's shoulder; and the tears ran down her cheeks. The letter from William that Lady Tranmore had given her lay on a table near. She took it up, and lit a candle to read it.

"Kitty--I bid you come home. I should have started for Venice an hour ago, after reading Miss French's letter, but that honor and public duty keep me here. But mother is going, and I implore and command you, as your husband, to return with her. Oh, Kitty, have I ever failed you?--have I ever been hard with you?--that you should betray our love like this? Was I hard when we parted--a month ago? If I was, forgive me, I was sore pressed. Come home, you poor child, and you shall hear no reproaches from me. I think I have nearly succeeded in undoing your rash work. But what good will that be to me if you are to use my absence for that purpose to bring us both to ruin? Kitty, the gra.s.s is not yet green on our child's grave. I was at Haggart last Sunday, and I went over in the dusk to put some flowers upon it. I thought of you without a moment's bitterness, and prayed for us both, if such as I may pray. Then next morning came Miss French's letter. Kitty, have you no heart--and no conscience? Will you bring disgrace on that little grave? Will you dig between us the gulf which is irreparable, across which your hand and mine can never touch each other any more? I cannot and I will not believe it. Come back to me--come back!"

She reread it with a melting heart--with deep, shaking sobs. When she first glanced through it the word "command" had burned into her proud sense; the rest pa.s.sed almost unnoticed. Now the very strangeness in it as coming from William--the strangeness of its grave and deep emotion--held and grappled with her.

Suddenly--some tension of the whole being seemed to give way. Her head sank back on the chair, she felt herself weak and trembling, yet happy as a soul new-born into a world of light. Waking dreams pa.s.sed through her brain in a feverish succession, reversing the dream of the night--images of peace and goodness and reunion.

Minutes--hours--pa.s.sed. With the first light she got up feebly, found ink and paper, and began to write.

_From Lady Tranmore to William Ashe_:

"Oh! my dearest William--at last a gleam of hope.

"No letter this morning. I was in despair. Margaret reported that Kitty refused to see any one--had locked her door, and was writing. Yet no letter came. I made an attempt to see Geoffrey Cliffe, who is staying at the 'Germania,' but he refused. He wrote me the most audacious letter to say that an interview could only be very painful, that he and Kitty must decide for themselves, that he was waiting every hour for a final word from Kitty. It rested with her, and with her only. Coercion in these matters was no longer possible, and he did not suppose that either you or I would attempt it.

"And now comes this blessed note--a respite at least! '_I am going to Verona to-night with Blanche. Please let no one attempt to follow me. I wish to have two days alone--absolutely alone. Wait here. I will write.

K_.'

"... Margaret French, too, has just been here. She was almost hysterical with relief and joy--and you know what a calm, self-controlled person she is. But her dear, round face has grown white, and her eyes behind her spectacles look as though she had not slept for nights. She says that Kitty will not see her. She sent her a note by Blanche to ask her to settle all the accounts, and told her that she should not say good-bye--it would be too agitating for them both. In two days she should hear. Meanwhile the maid Blanche is certainly going with Kitty; and the gondola is ordered for the Milan train this evening.

"Two P.M. There is one thing that troubles me, and I must confess it. I did not see that across Kitty's letter in the corner was written 'Tell _n.o.body_ about this letter.' And Polly Lyster happened to be with me when it came. She has been _au courant_ of the whole affair for the last fortnight--that is, as an on-looker. She and Kitty have only met once or twice since Mary reached Venice; but in one way or another she has been extraordinarily well informed. And, as I told you, she came to see me directly I arrived and told me all she knew. You know her old friendship for us, William? She has many weaknesses, and of late I have thought her much changed, grown very hard and bitter. But she is always _very_ loyal to you and me--and I could not help betraying my feeling when Kitty's note reached me. Mary came and put her arms round me, and I said to her, 'Oh, Mary, thank G.o.d!--she's broken with him! She's going to Verona to-night on the way home!' And she kissed me and seemed so glad.

And I was very grateful to her for her sympathy, for I am beginning to feel my age, and this has been rather a strain. But I oughtn't to have told her!--or anybody! I see, of course, what Kitty meant. It is incredible that Mary should breathe a word--or if she did that it should reach that man. But I have just sent her a note to Danieli's to warn her in the strongest way.

"Beloved son--if, indeed, we save her--we will be very good to her, you and I. We will remember her bringing up and her inheritance. I will be more loving--more like Christ. I hope He will forgive me for my harshness in the past.... My William!--I love you so! G.o.d be merciful to you and to your poor Kitty!"

"Will the signora have her dinner outside or in the _salle-a-manger?"_

The question was addressed to Kitty by a little Italian waiter belonging to the Albergo San Zeno at Verona, who stood bent before her, his white napkin under his arm.

"Out here, please--and for my maid also."

The speaker moved wearily towards the low wall which bounded the foaming Adige, and looked across the river. Far away the Alps that look down on Garda glistened under the stars; the citadel on its hill, the houses across the river were alive with lights; to the left the great mediaeval bridge rose, a dark, ponderous ma.s.s, above the torrents of the Adige.

Overhead, the little outside restaurant was roofed with twining vine-stems from which the leaves had fallen; colored lights twinkled among them and on the white tables underneath. The night was mild and still, and a veiled moon was just rising over the town of Juliet.

"Blanche!"

"Yes, my lady?"

"Bring a chair, Blanchie, and come and sit by me."

The little maid did as she was told, and Kitty slipped her hand into hers with a long sigh.

"Are you very tired, my lady?"

"Yes--but don't talk!"

The two sat silent, clinging to each other.

A step on the cobble-stones disturbed them. Blanche looked up, and saw a gentleman issuing from a lane which connected the narrow quay whereon stood the old Albergo San Zeno with one of the main streets of Verona.

There was a cry from Kitty. The stranger paused--looked--advanced. The little maid rose, half fierce, half frightened.

"Go, Blanche, go!" said Kitty, panting; "go back into the hotel."

"Not unless your ladyship wishes me to leave you," said the girl, firmly.

"Go at once!" Kitty repeated, with a peremptory gesture. She herself rose from her seat, and with one hand resting on the table awaited the new-comer. Blanche looked at her--hesitated--and went.

Geoffrey Cliffe came to Kitty's side. As he approached her his eyes fastened on the loveliness of her att.i.tude, her fair head. In his own expression there was a visionary, fantastic joy; it was the look of the dreamer who, for once, finds in circ.u.mstance and the real, poetry adequate and overflowing.

"Kitty!--why did you do this?" he said to her, pa.s.sionately, as he caught her hand.

Kitty s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, trembling under his look. She began the answer she had devised while he was crossing the flagged quay towards her. But Cliffe paid no heed. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she sank back powerless into her chair as he bent over her.

"Cruel--cruel child, to play with me so! Did you mean to put me to a last test?--or did your hard little heart misgive you at the last moment? I cross-examined your landlady--I bribed the servants--the gondoliers. Not a word! They were loyal--or you had paid them better. I went back to my hotel in black despair. Oh, you artist!--you plotter!

Kitty--you shall pay me this some day! And there--there on my table--all the time--lay your little crumpled note!"

"What note?" she gasped--"what note?"

"Actress!" he said, with an amused laugh.